The family has become a subject of increasing scrutiny in recent years, giving special relevance to this work by the late Michael Sheehan. Collected here for the first time, Sheehan's papers contain the fruits of a forty-year-long career of archival research and interpretation of documents on property, marriage, family, sexuality, and law in medieval Europe. Marked by an early orientation and developing focus on the status of women in the Middle Ages, the work of Michael Sheehan displays a unique tapestry of the social and legal realities of medieval marriages and family life.

Sheehan's research focused on the parallel study and interpretation of Church law and cases drawn from ecclesiastical court registers. By analysing the emergence of the last will as a legal and social document, he brought a new interpretation to the definition and codification of Christian marriage and the family and how these institutions functioned in society. Although his approach was largely by way of canon law, he was invariably at pins to incorporate solid support from such related fields as theology, the social and popular history of religion, and the history of sexuality and sexual behaviour. As a result, these essays throw light on many social realities in medieval Europe and illustrate the development of a methodology for others to follow.

Michael M. Sheehan was Senior Fellow of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

Michael M. Sheehan's profile page

James K. Farge is a senior fellow and librarian at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.

James Farge's profile page

"Marriage, Family and Law in Medieval Europe is a comprehensive yet balanced collection of articles from Sheehan's scholarly career. Sheehan's original and meticulous work on a variety of legal sources laid the groundwork for much subsequent scholarship. Anyone interested in the development of the theory and practice of Christian marriage, the institutional frameworks for medieval women's lives, or seeking to understand English wills as legal products will find this collection of essays a valuable introduction to further research.'

Parergon

'It was a very happy inspiration which has led to the publication of this memorial volume of sixteen of his best known articles ... Some of those reprinted here have long been compulsory reading for all students of medieval society, and of the borderlines of social and legal history.'

Ecclesiastical Law Journal

'This volume of selected studies makes available in accessible form and chronological order several of Sheehan's seminal ideas and much of the substantial documentation gathered by him.'

Heythrop Journal